Paying Employees via Timecards

Paying with Timecards 

We've made paying non-exempt hourly and non-exempt salaried employees easy. This article covers everything you need to know about paying your employees using Timecards. 

 

Getting Started

To pay your hourly employees, navigate to Payments on your main dashboard and click "Timecards."

 

Your account is set up so that admins enter hours on behalf of hourly & non-exempt salaried employees by default. If you’d like your employees to submit their own hours directly to Justworks, you can enable Employee Timecard Entry, which we’ll cover in the following sections.

 

From this view, you'll see tabs for timecards that have not been started, any drafts you may have saved, and timecards you've already approved.

You can enter and edit your employees’ hours until 2:00pm ET on the day we process your timecards. If you miss this deadline, you’ll have to schedule off-cycle payments to these employees.

To save or approve an employee’s hours click the ‘Edit Hours’ button in the top right of the timecard.

 

Once you’ve entered hours, you can either save the timecard in progress so that you can add additional hours later, or simply hit 'approve'. You will be able to re-approve timecards as many times as you wish before processing. 

Paying Overtime

Justworks supports automated overtime calculations for hours worked in all 50 states. Justworks’ overtime calculations does not take into consideration local wage payment laws, shift overtime, industry-specific requirements, or incentive and other additional pay requirements. Customers should continue to supplement the Justworks system as necessary to comply with these requirements.

Simply click “Calculate overtime” in your employee’s timecard at the end of the pay period, and we will shift eligible overtime hours from the Regular row down to the Overtime row based on your employee’s current work location in Justworks.

 

Here is everything you need to know about the new overtime function:

• When you click “Calculate overtime” on a non-exempt employee’s Timecard, we will shift regular hours from the Regular row to the Overtime row according to the federal FLSA and state overtime requirements. 
• It is best to click “Calculate overtime” at the end of the pay period to ensure all worked hours are captured in the calculation. 
• Before you approve, be sure to review the hours and make any necessary changes. If you need to make a change to regular hours after you have clicked “Calculate overtime”, you will also need to manually adjust the overtime hours as necessary. 
• You will continue to Approve the timecard after you record overtime hours to ensure your employees get paid. 
• You must be in the “Daily” view of the Timecard in order for hours to shift from Regular to Overtime. Hours will not shift when using the “Weekly” view.
• If you use the “Add another rate” option on an employee’s timecard, the shifting of hours from the Regular row to the Overtime row will not occur.
• If you use the Import Hours Spreadsheet because you use an external Time and Attendance solution, you will not see the “Calculate overtime” button since overtime hours would have already been uploaded to Justworks based on the data on your spreadsheet. 
• Admins and managers with the "Manage Timecards" permission will have access to the new overtime function.
• Justworks’ system does not count PTO hours towards the overtime thresholds, consistent with FLSA requirements. 
• This new overtime function does not take into consideration local wage payment laws, shift overtime, industry-specific requirements, or incentive and other additional pay requirements. Customers should continue to supplement the Justworks system as necessary to comply with these requirements.
• Before you click “Approve”, review the Timecard to make sure that the wage payments are accurate and complete. In addition to any specific requirements applicable to your business, here are some examples of what you should review:
  • All hours worked have been accurately reported
  • Meal periods have been accurately reported
  • Applicable wage rates, including local wage requirements, are applied; and
  • Overtime wage calculations are accurate and complete, including the calculations that Justworks has automated for you, and any additional calculations that may be applicable to your business, such as shift overtime, industry-specific requirements, overtime wage calculations include incentive and other wage payments (e.g., piece-rate pay or shift differentials)

For more resources on federal and state overtime laws, visit our compliance starter guides.

 

Enabling Employee Timecard Entry

If you would like your employees to enter their own hours, you can enable employee timecard entry in Justworks. 

To do so, select ‘Enable employee timecard entry’ in the upper right corner of the above dashboard. 

Please note that employee entry is not available for those who are on a weekly pay frequency. 

When employee timecard entry is enabled, admins see employees’ timecards split up into four tabs:

• Not Started - Contains timecards that have not had any hours saved by the employee or entered by their manager or admin.
• Saved Drafts - Contains timecards for any hourly employees who have saved hours in their timecards, but have not submitted their hours to their admin for approval,
• Ready for Approval - Contains timecards that have been submitted by employees for approval.
• Approved - Contains timecards that have been approved.

 

Timecards can be edited even after they have been approved up until the payroll deadline at 2:00PM EST on the day Justworks processes your timecards. Hourly employees are notified via email when their hours are edited and/or approved.

 

Calculating Overtime After Employees Submit Their Timecards

If your employees are entering their own hours, you will need to manually account for any overtime hours worked after they submit their Timecards by clicking “Calculate overtime”. You'll see this reminder once navigating to the Timecards tab from your Justworks account as well.

When employee timecard entry is enabled, the employee will enter all hours worked into their timecards, like so:

Once the employee has submitted their timecard, you can find their Timecard in the “Ready for Approval” tab. Before approving, make sure to click “Edit Hours” and record overtime hours for the employee by clicking “Calculate overtime” on the timecard:

 

 

When you click on “Calculate overtime”, Justworks will automatically calculate overtime for hours worked by applying both federal and state requirements and shift eligible overtime hours from the Regular row down to the Overtime row, according to the employee’s current work location in Justworks.

Please make sure that you are reporting wages, including overtime, in compliance with the work location where your employee is working, which may be different from their usual work location.

 

State Overtime

Some states have state overtime laws, in addition to the federal FLSA overtime law. Below, are the five current states with these overtime laws. 

Alaska and Nevada

Alaska and Nevada require daily overtime to be paid when the hours worked exceed 8 hours in a given day. Remember that for any hours in excess of 40 hours that have not received overtime per state rules, the FLSA overtime wage payment laws (and similar state laws) will apply. You should review the calculations to ensure they comply with wage payment requirements applicable to your situation.

Let’s consider Mary’s timecard:

Once we click on “Calculate overtime”, Justworks will shift the hours from Regular into Overtime as follows:

California

California law requires employers to pay employees overtime, unless otherwise exempt, when they work more than eight hours in a workday or in certain situations described below work a seventh consecutive day in a workweek. An employer is required to pay:

1. One and one-half times (1.5x) the employee's regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 8 hours up to and including 12 hours in any workday, and for the first 8 hours worked on the 7th consecutive day of work in a workweek; and
2. Double (2.0x) the employee's regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 12 hours in any workday and for all hours worked in excess of 8 on the 7th consecutive day of work in a workweek.
• 7th consecutive day overtime must be paid when the employee works 6 hours or more on any of the prior 6 days in the workweek OR works 30 hours or more during the prior 6 days of the workweek.

Finally, California also requires that overtime be paid after 40 hours in a workweek. For example, if an employee works 8 hours from Monday through Friday, and 4 hours on Saturday, this would result in 4 hours of overtime on Saturday. 

Justworks provides these calculations for you, so you only need to click on “Calculate overtime” for the hours to shift from Regular to Overtime according to California state law. You should review the calculations to ensure they comply with wage payment requirements applicable to your situation. 

In this example, once you click on “Calculate overtime”, Justworks will shift the hours from Regular to Overtime and Double time as follows:

• The employee did not work 7 consecutive days, so the 7th consecutive day rule did not apply here. 
• The employee worked 15 min above 12 hours on Monday, so this time is paid at a double-time rate. 
• The employee worked more than 8 hours on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so all hours above 8 hours and under 12 hours on each of those days are shifted to per the daily overtime rule.

Colorado

Colorado requires daily overtime to be paid when the hours worked exceed 12 hours in a given day. Remember that for any hours in excess of 40 hours that have not received overtime per state rules, the FLSA overtime wage payment laws (and similar state laws) will apply. You should review the calculations to ensure they comply with wage payment requirements applicable to your situation.

Let’s consider Jennifer’s timecard:

Once we click on “Calculate overtime”, Justworks will shift the hours from Regular into Overtime as follows:

Kentucky 

Kentucky requires employers to pay overtime when employees work seven consecutive days in the workweek. Kentucky’s “seventh-day” law applies when an employee (i) works all seven days in a single workweek and (ii) works more than 40 hours in that workweek. When those two conditions are met, the employee is entitled to time and a half for all hours he or she works on the seventh day. This is true even if the employee has not yet worked 40 hours in that week when he or she begins work on the seventh day. You should review the calculations to ensure they comply with wage payment requirements applicable to your situation

For example, let’s look at Kevin’s timecard: 

Once we click on “Calculate overtime”, Justworks will shift the hours from Regular into Overtime as follows:

 

As always, you are responsible for ensuring that work time is accurately reported and all earned wages are paid, so be sure to review your reports of hours worked for accuracy and review the wage payment calculations, including overtime and double time calculations to ensure they comply with wage payment requirements applicable to your situations.

 

Automatically Synced PTO In Timecards

If employees have had PTO requests approved from policies that have the 'Timecard Sync' settingenabled, admins will see those hours automatically in said employees' timecards, so long as those timecards are not already approved.

To illustrate, if Kathleen has saved hours for the first four days of the pay period, like so:

Then has PTO hours approved for Friday, 10/30:

 

Those 8 hours will automatically be added to her timecard:

 

Timecards that only have synced PTO hours on them will show under the Saved Draft tab from the admin view, regardless of whether employee timecard entry is enabled or not.

 

Employee-Saved Timecards

If employee timecard entry is enabled, your hourly employees also have the option to save their hours into their timecards tab throughout the pay period. You’ll see any of the hours they’ve entered during the pay period under the ‘Saved Drafts’ tab.

Employees will be able to save their timecards as many times as they like until the processing time. Even if they never hit ‘submit’ on their end, you’ll be able to click into ‘edit hours’ and approve them prior to processing.

If you take no action, however, they will not be paid out with the rest of the approved timecards and you’ll need to schedule an off-cycle payment for those hours.

 

Reminder emails

Admins will receive email reminders after the pay period ends, and on the day hours are due, letting you know who, if anyone, still needs hours entered for that pay period. If employee timecard entry is enabled, that email will specify which employees haven’t submitted their timecards, who is waiting for approval, and whose timecard is complete.

If an employee (or you) has not entered their hours on time, they will not be paid through regular payroll for that pay period. In that event, off-cycle payments will need to be scheduled to all regularly and overtime hours that employees worked during the pay period.

 

Manager Permissions

You can give managers the ability to fill out, submit, and approve timecards for their direct reports and extended teams. You can set up Manager Timecard Permissions by going to the ‘Permissions’ tab from the left-hand menu in your Justworks account, clicking on the ‘Manager Permissions’ tab at the top of the screen, and enabling ‘Manage Employee Timecards.'

Managers who have this permission will not be able to make other payments, or approve timecards of those who are not in their reporting chain.

 

Contractors cannot be paid on an hourly basis

Only employees can be paid on an hourly basis. 

 

Hourly & non-exempt salaried employees are paid on Fridays

In order to simplify overtime calculation and processing, hourly and non-exempt salaried employees must be paid on a weekly or biweekly basis. All hourly employees will receive their payments on a Friday of the week after the pay period ends, or earlier if a holiday falls on Friday. Hours must be entered by 2:00PM EST four business days prior to pay day.

 

You can specify multiple rates when paying hourly employees

When you pay your employees via Timecards, you may enter multiple rates beyond the employee’s base rate. In this case, you will have to manually enter/adjust overtime hours as Justworks will not calculate this automatically.

 

It's important to note that everything is entered in ​hours, for example:

.30 = 18 minutes

.50 = 30 minutes

.75 = 45 minutes

 

Not-processed timecards

Timecards for hourly employees that were either saved or submitted but not approved will not automatically be processed or rescheduled. Instead, the admin of the account will have to schedule an off-cycle payment for their employee from the 'Make a Payment' tool.

The time entered for that employee, though, will still be stored under the 'Not Processed' tab for the applicable pay period.

Timecards that had no time saved or submitted will not be shown from this tab.

 

You can switch an employee's pay basis from salaried to hourly

Admins with the proper permissions can find the 'Change Compensation' button on the top of an employee's profile. You can also access this workflow from the Job Information tab, and hitting 'Edit' from the Compensation section. From the following screen, you'll be able to change the employees Pay Basis to "salary" or "hourly". 

In the case that you switch an employee from hourly to salary, you will still be prompted to enter hours for the previous pay periods until the effective date of the new "salary" status.

 

Paying non-exempt salaried employees

Your non-exempt salaried employees will also be paid through Timecards, making it easier to track and pay any overtime hours. These employees will be on the same pay schedule as your hourly employees.

If you need to record any overtime hours worked for a non-exempt salaried employee, you’ll have to enter in regular hours worked as well.

 

Disclaimer

This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, legal or tax advice. If you have any legal or tax questions regarding this content or related issues, then you should consult with your professional legal or tax advisor.